I'm a fairly new free software developer. I spend most of my hacking time working on the AbiWord project, and fooling around with XML and associated technologies, something that has potential to change the way we see the web (and for the better).

My other 'free software-esque' involvement is with anti- censorship work. I maintain censored information on my web page, and was forced to move my copy of cphack off my personal machine by the University. I'm currently active in the OpenLaw DVD project (run Harvard Law School). We are about to submit an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in the NY DeCSS case.

When I'm not hacking, I spend my time playing Ultimate Frisbee, or watching Law & Order obsessively.

Finally, when I'm not doing other things, I'm an undergrad CS and philosophy major at the University of Chicago.

People I have certified:

cuenca - Joaquin Cuenca Abela, the maintainer of the GNOME port of AbiWord, and all around quality coder. We would be far poorer without him.

sterwill - Shaw Terwilliger, who works for Sourcear and used to work on AbiWord. We all hope you come back, Shaw.

Projects

Articles Posted by samth

Recent blog entries by samth

I just wanted to thank lilo for his most recent diary entry. It saddens me to see people who
don't understand what they are buying into with the new media that content distributors are trying to push on us.
But far more sad are the people, such as those here, who do understand, but are still buying into the system,
simply because it offers a few creature comforts.

This reminds me of something a friend of mine said to me several years ago, well before I started using free
software. I had said that I like some MS software, and would just use that, as opposed to using all of it, the way
they wanted me to. He responded that that wasn't enough, I had to reject it all, or eventually I wouldn't have a
choice about any of it. This was before the antitrust trial even began.

I leave you with one last analogy. You wouldn't want to be in a relationship with someone who came with more
baggage than you could handle (trust me on this one). Don't do it for software, or movies, or anything else, either.
Eventually, you have to pay.

schoen: I have thought of
a much better
reason for rejecting the idea that God has falsified reality
- it is irrelevant. We assume that God did this well
enough so the world was entirely consistent. Then, there
are no features (or even possible features) that could
distinguish the world I believe we live in for the
fraudulent one created by God. So, what is the meaning of
the claim that "God could have faked evolution"? Not only
is it non-falsifiable, like most creationist statements, but
it is also non-verifiable. So it's meaningless. I might
respond to the rest of your arguments after I get some sleep.

And what, precisely, does

grep a{0}

match? I'm
quite curious.

deekayen: First, since AIDS
is a subject
upon which you are clearly clueless, why do you choose to
bring it up? Do you feel threatened by people's concern for
the victims of AIDS?

Second, what about unprotected sex causes the participants
to forfeit their right to life? You seem to believe that
even condoms don't make a difference here, yet the odds of
being killed driving to meet someone at random is higher
than the odds of dying of AIDS contracted from that person,
if you use a condom. Are people who drive cars deserving of
death also?

Third, do you have any idea just how racist
and stupid you comment about Africa was? Not only did you
make ludicrous claims about subjects you obviously know
nothing about, but you claimed that Sub-Saharan Africa has
merely one culture.

Fourth, if you have no sympathy for the people who have
contracted AIDS while engaged in activities in which you
disapprove, at least feel for the the babies, infected in
their mother's womb. Or the children who have lost their
parents to AIDS. Or the remaining members of the villages
who lose half their population. Or every person who has
someone they care about die of the disease. Better still,
get a clue:

pjones: Sadly, I appear not to have made
myself clear enough, since you seem to believe I find belief
in the original creation of the world by God incompatible
with all science. This is neither what I said nor what I
meant. What I did say was that in order to do science, we
must ignore the possibility that our senses are being used
by a higher power to decieve us, since if we do not rule
that out, all experiment and experience is useless. There
is clearly room for God here, but not a god that tricks us.

One, the people that tend to emphasize the word theory in
"theory of evolution" are the same people who want to use
that to mean "hypothesis". Evolution is certainly a theory
according to the scientific definition, as is gravity, and
lots of other things.

Two, Newtonian Mechanics fail on macro scales too. In fact,
one of the original confimations of relativity was that it
correctly predicted the procession of Mercury's orbit, while
Newtonian physics mispredicted this by 43 arc seconds per
century. See this
page, about 2/3 of the way down, for more info.

Second, as to the reliability of measurements.

It is certainly possible for an all-powerful God to have
fabricated the evidence for evolution, if such a God were to

exist. However, once we allow this, then all of science
goes out the window quite quickly. How can we know anything
about the world, if all of our sensory perception could be
fabricated? Clearly, we can't. So we are left with a few
choices:

Abandon all study of reality as futile.

Invoke a loving God to ensure that nobody tricks us.

Assume that our sensory perception is not being
fabricated by some powerful being.

I don't like choice 1 much, for obvious reasons. Choice 2
is a cop-out of the highest order, and is what Descartes
chose, when confronted with this problem. This leaves
choice 3.

Therefore, since I see belief that our senses are being
faked as an abandonment of science, claiming that the
evidence for an old earth has been faked is similar.
At least, that's what I'm left with.

rakholh: The people
mrorganic is complaining about are not
people similar to the way you describe yourself. They are
people who believe the about 6000 years ago, God created the
earth in a span of 144 hours, where hours are defined the
way we normally do. Naturally, this belief is incompatible
with real science. It doesn't help that these people want
their beliefs taught in school as science.
Additionally, these people take other elements of the bible
overly literally, such as the portions about the
subservience of women.

pjones: The belief that God (for some value
thereof) originally created the universe a long time
ago is not incompatible with science (knowledge of what
happened before the big bang is impossible). Similarly, the
belief that the process of evolution was either begun or
helped by God is non in conflict with science, although it
is non-falsifiable.

However, the belief that the Earth is only 6000 years old
is incompatible with science, since there is huge
quanties of evidence suggesting that the Earth is much
older. Similarly, the belief that speciation is impossible
(widespread among creationist I have known) is also
incompatible with science.

Finally, which is a better candidate for belief, a theory
which has 150+ years of accumulated evidence, or a theory
that was proved incorrect almost 100 years ago? Despite
this, however, many people continue to drone on about the
so-called "theory" of evolution, all the while taking
Newtonian mechanics as truth.